Rain Rock

[IMAUDIGGER]

I'm not going to get this story 100%, however the story goes...
This medicine rock was used by Native American doctors AKA "medicine men" since the beginning of their creation. The primary function of the rock was to control the weather.

The salmon run was extremely important to the river tribes, both as a food source and spiritually. The Salmon will not migrate up the river until there is some rainfall. If you have a long dry fall..you will have a late season Salmon run.

The Indian doctors would perform a ceremony involving the divots which would solicit the Great Spirit to bring rain. The rock was covered to stop the rain. The linear gouges are said to have been used to bring on snow fall...other perpendicular gouges stopped the snow fall.

In the late 1880's a local miner paid a medicine man to make it rain so they could start their mining season. All of the flumes, ditches, and diversions were constructed, but there was not enough water. It was also said to have been a very late salmon run.

I forget the price, but it was probably $15 in gold.
The ceremony was performed (presumably uncovering the rock and doing something with the pits or divots). The next day it started raining.
It rained long and heavy enough that the rivers flooded. All the miner's work was destroyed by the flooding.

The local tribe got very angry at the medicine man because he caused such a devastating flood.
The "rain rock" was buried in order to stop the flooding.

This story was recorded in a historical publication, some time in early 1900.

In the late 1940's the state was constructing a new highway and the workers found the rain rock in their excavations.

It was moved to a museum and has been covered from time to time during floods.
One time during a heavy weight boxing fight in New York City, a telegraph was sent requesting the rock be covered so as to prevent it from raining back east. The request was honored and the fight was completed without rain.

Another story is a log truck bumped the rock as it was driving into some truck scales and a log fell off shaking the rain rock. The next morning everyone woke up to 2 feet of snow (on April 1st)....

I find it very interesting to look at this rock and envision the hard times that must have occurred waiting for the fall run of Salmon...sick of venison and acorn soup.

If I run across the old story, I'll post it up as a correction to my version.

 

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[Saguache]

Looks like MN is letting the rr have its way in the midwest...

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

I may have blended two different local rain rock stories..but the point being sometimes the medicine is just too powerful.

At any rate, it was said to have been used in the first salmon ceremony, time immemorial. It was buried after flooding in 1889...documented by an anthropologist via verbal interviews with local Indians in 1909 (still buried at that time)....accidentally recovered in 1948.
The key attribute that tied the 1909 account to the rock dug up in 1948 (previously lost for 59 years) is the bear's feet scratched into the rock, which is apparently uncommon.

I wonder when the first salmon ceremony occurred??

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

Looks like MN is letting the rr have its way in the midwest...

As far as I know, we have not received any official requests to cover the rock due to flooding in the Midwest. It's likely they are not aware of the rock's powers.

 

[Kray Gelder]

Where is the rock now?

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

Sitting on that concrete pedestal in front of a local museum as shown in the first photo (in Northern California). This is where the tribe wanted it displayed.
They have a fantastic room dedicated to local North American artifacts.

It's a little hole in the wall place that even many of the residents don't know exists.

I knew about it because my dad told me they had a two headed calf mounted on the wall.
We always were driving by on the weekends and they were closed. It was a place of fascination for me.

 

[Fred250]

Cool story, any idea how big it is?

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

Cool story, any idea how big it is?

It's 62" Long x 43" Wide x 27" Tall and weighs 4000 pounds. It is a soapstone or talc rock (Steatite?)
It is thought the white powder produced by pounding on it or scratching it served a ceremonial purpose.

Other known stones used for similiar purposes (having grooves and divots) are also a soft material such as talc or soapstone.

I'm reading that the bear prints are "the only known instance of representative inscriptions in a naturalistic form", in this area.
I assume that means the only object which was accurately drawn to closely resemble an actual object, rather than using symbology to represent it.

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

I've just learned what I was calling divots are actuallly "cupules". They can be pecked, pounded or ground.

 

[southfork]

This one is out in the Great Basin made from Basalt .

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

This one is out in the Great Basin made from Basalt .

Wasn't a nutting stone now was it?

 

[southfork]

Wasn't a nutting stone now was it?

No its ceremonial .

 

[Charl]

No its ceremonial .

Yes, and found the world over....

Cupules, Prehistoric Petroglyphs

 

[Toecutter]

Awesome!!! thank you for sharing...

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

I found the old story related to the miner's involvement in causing the flood and will post that later today.

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

So the story goes the miners requested a local Indian make it rain. They said if it rained, they would pay him money.
The Indian performed the ceremony (it's unclear if it was using the same medicine rock).
It began to rain. The Indian approached the miner's and requested his pay, but they refused. Out of anger and to avenge the insult, the Indian made it rain harder and harder until the flood washed away all of the miners ditches and flumes.

Very traditional sounding folklore story in my opinion.

 

[NCPeaches]

It's very cool and reminds me of Judaculla Rock in Cullowhee, NC

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

From what I have read so far, there are only a half dozen documented talc/soapstone rocks with pecked cupules that have been documented as being associated with weather control in my county. Two of them have folklore associated with them that has to do with weather control. A third is a smaller rock that is mounted in the museum wall that is purported to be a rain rock. 3 other rain rocks remain at one of the sites where it was collected.


Apparently the act of pecking a rock for ceremonial purposes isn't something that was common practice...or maybe only specific rocks had spiritual powers, otherwise after thousands of years there would be more evidence of this practice. There must have been some superstition surrounding it. It may have been considered very dangerous or taboo for the average person to try and affect the weather.

 

[IMAUDIGGER]

Interesting thought....
As Florence Shipek (1992:91) pointed out, native Californian rain-makers were "scientists" since they "must have been highly observant of all phenomena that preceded any change in weather, and thus they could predict and with ceremony 'bring' the result."

 

[welsbury]

Here is a pic for you imaudigger. This is from Stone Age in Great Basin by Emory Strong,page 107.It shows what they call a rain rock from the Grimes site which is near Fallon Nevada.